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152-399: Members of the movement saw themselves as a progressive élite, and battled against religious and political persecution, fighting against what they saw as the irrationality, arbitrariness, obscurantism and superstition of the previous centuries. They redefined the study of knowledge to fit the ethics and aesthetics of their time. Their works had great influence at the end of the 18th century, in

304-403: A pseudoscientific article proposing that physical reality is a social construct, in order to learn whether Social Text would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if: (a) it sounded good, and, (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions". Sokal's fake article was published in the spring/summer 1996 issue of Social Text , which was dedicated to the science wars about

456-515: A "personal" slave), Denis Diderot in Supplément au voyage de Bougainville , Voltaire in Candide and Guillaume-Thomas Raynal in his encyclopaedic Histoire des deux Indes , the very model of 18th-century anticolonialism to which, among others, Diderot and d’Holbach contributed. It was stated without any proof that one of their number, Voltaire , had shares in the slave trade . At

608-455: A Christian God became the crux of philosophical investigations of knowledge. On one side, religious philosophy concentrated on piety , and the omniscience and ultimately mysterious nature of God; on the other were ideas such as deism , underpinned by the impression that the world was comprehensible by human reason and that it was governed by universal physical laws. God was imagined as a "Great Watchmaker"; experimental natural philosophers found

760-598: A Deist, he shared many of the deists' key attitudes and is now usually regarded as a Deist. Especially noteworthy is Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730), which became, very soon after its publication, the focal center of the Deist controversy. Because almost every argument, quotation, and issue raised for decades can be found here, the work is often termed "the Deist's Bible". Following Locke's successful attack on innate ideas, Tindal's "Bible" redefined

912-401: A balance between the idea of a "natural" liberty (or autonomy) and the freedom from that liberty, that is to say, the recognition that the autonomy found in nature was at odds with the discipline required for pure reason. At the same time, with various monarchs' reforms, there was a piecemeal attempt to redefine the order of society, and the relationship between monarch and subjects. The idea of

1064-418: A conception of God whose characteristics included "absolute perfection in some respects, relative perfection in all others" or "AR," writing that this theory "is able consistently to embrace all that is positive in either deism or pandeism," concluding that " panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations." Charles Taylor , in his 2007 book A Secular Age , showed

1216-509: A deliberately obscure philosopher. In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), Richard Rorty proposed that in The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (1978), Jacques Derrida purposefully used undefinable words (e.g. différance ) and used defined words in contexts so diverse that they render the words unintelligible, hence, the reader is unable to establish a context for his literary self. In that way,

1368-470: A distinction of intended audience , where exoteric works were written for the public, and the esoteric works were more technical works intended for use within the Lyceum . Modern scholars commonly assume these latter to be Aristotle's own (unpolished) lecture notes or, in some cases, possible notes by his students. However, the 5th-century neoplatonist Ammonius Hermiae writes that Aristotle's writing style

1520-488: A hand in human affairs), something that many Deists were inclined to accept. Those who believed in a watch-maker God rejected the possibility of miracles and divine providence. They believed that God, after establishing natural laws and setting the cosmos in motion, stepped away. He did not need to keep tinkering with his creation, and the suggestion that he did was insulting. Others, however, firmly believed in divine providence, and so, were reluctantly forced to accept at least

1672-583: A natural order was equally prevalent in scientific thought, for example, in the works of the biologist Carl von Linné . In Germany, Immanuel Kant (like Rousseau, defining himself among the Lumières) heavily criticised the limitations of pure reason in his work Critique of Pure Reason ( German : Kritik der reinen Vernunft ), but also that of English empiricism in Critique of Practical Reason ( German : Kritik der praktischen Vernunft ). Compared with

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1824-552: A pseudoscientific opus , the article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" is described as an exemplar " pastiche of left-wing cant , fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense, centered on the claim that physical reality is merely a social construct". Deism Deism ( / ˈ d iː ɪ z əm / DEE -iz-əm   or / ˈ d eɪ . ɪ z əm / DAY -iz-əm ; derived from

1976-536: A recognizable movement in the 1730s. A number of reasons have been suggested for this decline, including: Although Deism has declined in popularity over time, scholars believe that these ideas still have a lingering influence on modern society . One of the major activities of the Deists, biblical criticism , evolved into its own highly technical discipline. Deist rejection of revealed religion evolved into, and contributed to, 19th-century liberal British theology and

2128-441: A ruling class, obscurantism is anti-democratic in its components of anti-intellectualism and social elitism , which exclude the majority of the people, deemed unworthy of knowing the facts about their government and the political and economic affairs of their city-state . In 18th century monarchic France, the political scientist Marquis de Condorcet documented the obscurantism of the aristocracy and their indifference to

2280-489: A specific kind of piety and morality, without being bound to a church denomination, whilst however also rejecting irreligion and godlessness ." The Gottgläubigkeit is considered a form of deism, and was "predominantly based on creationist and deistic views". In the 1920 National Socialist Programme of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), Adolf Hitler first mentioned

2432-464: A stable society—hence the noble lie necessary in securing public acquiescence. In The City and Man (1964), he discusses the myths in The Republic that Plato proposes effective governing requires, among them, the belief that the country (land) ruled by the state belongs to it (despite some having been conquered from others), and that citizenship derives from more than the accident of birth in

2584-834: A theological treatise written by the Swiss Calvinist theologian named Pierre Viret , but Deism was generally unknown in the Kingdom of France until the 1690s when Pierre Bayle published his famous Dictionnaire Historique et Critique , which contained an article on Viret. In English, the words deist and theist were originally synonymous, but by the 17th century the terms started to diverge in meaning. The term deist with its current meaning first appears in English in Robert Burton 's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). The first major statement of Deism in English

2736-720: A view. According to the Afghan-American philosopher Sayed Hassan Hussaini , the early schools of Islamic theology and theological beliefs among classical Muslim philosophers are characterized by "a rich color of Deism with a slight disposition toward theism ". The terms deism and theism are both derived from words meaning " god ": the Latin term deus and the Ancient Greek term theós (θεός), respectively. The word déiste first appeared in French in 1563 in

2888-966: Is Lord Herbert of Cherbury 's book De Veritate (1624). Lord Herbert, like his contemporary Descartes , searched for the foundations of knowledge. The first two-thirds of his book De Veritate ( On Truth, as It Is Distinguished from Revelation, the Probable, the Possible, and the False ) are devoted to an exposition of Herbert's theory of knowledge . Herbert distinguished truths from experience and distinguished reasoning about experience from innate and revealed truths. Innate truths are imprinted on our minds, as evidenced by their universal acceptance. Herbert referred to universally accepted truths as notitiae communes— Common Notions. Herbert believed there were five Common Notions that unify all religious beliefs. Herbert himself had relatively few followers, and it

3040-569: Is Sliding towards Deism , observed that an increasing number of pupils in İmam Hatip schools was repudiating Islam in favour of Deism (irreligious belief in a creator God ). The report's publication generated large-scale controversy in the Turkish press and society at large, as well as amongst conservative Islamic sects , Muslim clerics , and Islamist parties in Turkey . The progressive Muslim theologian Mustafa Öztürk noted

3192-500: Is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage". Nevertheless, biographer Terry Pinkard notes: "Hegel has refused to go away, even in analytic philosophy, itself." Hegel was aware of his perceived obscurantism and perceived it as part of philosophical thinking: to accept and transcend

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3344-539: Is a valid source of religious knowledge, and (2) revelation is not a valid source of religious knowledge. Different Deist philosophers expanded on these two assertions to create what Leslie Stephen later termed the "constructive" and "critical" aspects of Deism. "Constructive" assertions—assertions that deist writers felt were justified by appeals to reason and features of the natural world (or perhaps were intuitively obvious or common notions)—included: "Critical" assertions—assertions that followed from

3496-469: Is deliberately obscurantist so that "good people may for that reason stretch their mind even more, whereas empty minds that are lost through carelessness will be put to flight by the obscurity when they encounter sentences like these". In contemporary discussions of virtue ethics , Aristotle 's Nicomachean Ethics ( The Ethics ) stands accused of ethical obscurantism, because of the technical, philosophic language and writing style, and their purpose being

3648-555: Is especially noteworthy both for his contributions to the cause of the American Revolution and for his writings in defense of Deism, alongside the criticism of Abrahamic religions . In The Age of Reason (1793–1794) and other writings, he advocated Deism, promoted reason and freethought , and argued against institutionalized religions in general and the Christian doctrine in particular. The Age of Reason

3800-961: Is fundamental in nature, but it is not self-evident. On the contrary, it is the advance of human reason that reveals this constant structure. Romanticism is the exact opposite of this stance. D’une façon générale, la sensibilité des Lumières porte à une sentimentalité morale : le temps de l’ironie voltairienne passé, on veut s’apitoyer, avec Rousseau (la Nouvelle Héloïse, 1761) et les tableaux de Greuze, chercher le beau et le bon éternels. Plus le siècle s’avance, plus la littérature et l’art répudient la gratuité des formes, la légèreté, regardées comme aristocratiques et mondaines, pour aller vers le sérieux, l’authentique et le naturel, c’est-à-dire vers ce qui est conforme à la morale utilitaire du public bourgeois d’où le goût croissant pour le néoclassicisme, qui met en avant l’antique, non pas l’antique allégorique de l’époque classique mais un antique historique plus sobre, à la façon du peintre David In its general view,

3952-410: Is the belief in the existence of God —often, but not necessarily, an impersonal and incomprehensible God who does not intervene in the universe after creating it , solely based on rational thought without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority. Deism emphasizes the concept of natural theology —that is, God's existence is revealed through nature. Since the 17th century and during

4104-528: Is the debate over the beliefs of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington . In his Autobiography , Franklin wrote that as a young man "Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than

4256-627: Is the insistence that nothingness is something positive. As with much else in Existentialism, this is a psychological observation made to pass for logic." That is Russell's complete entry on Heidegger, and it expresses the sentiments of many 20th-century analytic philosophers concerning Heidegger. In their obituaries " Jacques Derrida , Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74" (10 October 2004) and "Obituary of Jacques Derrida, French intellectual" (21 October 2004), The New York Times newspaper and The Economist magazine described Derrida as

4408-405: Is the province of a buffered, disengaged self, which is the locus of dignity, freedom, and discipline, and is endowed with a sense of human capability. According to Taylor, by the early 19th century this Deism-mediated exclusive humanism developed as an alternative to Christian faith in a personal God and an order of miracles and mystery. Some critics of Deism have accused adherents of facilitating

4560-410: Is the release of man from a state of bondage for which he is himself responsible. In this state of bondage he is unable to fulfill his intentions without the help of another. He is himself responsible for this bondage, where the cause is not a lack of understanding but a lack of resolution and courage to use it unguided. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! Such is the motto of

4712-489: The Age of Enlightenment , especially in 18th-century England, France , and North America , various Western philosophers and theologians formulated a critical rejection of the several religious texts belonging to the many organized religions , and began to appeal only to truths that they felt could be established by reason as the exclusive source of divine knowledge. Such philosophers and theologians were called "Deists", and

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4864-545: The Age of Reason and the Lumières movement, Newton's example remains unsurpassed, in taking observed facts and constructing a theory which explains them a priori , for example taking the motions of the planets observed by Johannes Kepler to confirm his law of universal gravitation . Naturalism saw the unification of pure empiricism as practiced by the likes of Francis Bacon with the axiomatic, "pure reason" approach of Descartes. Belief in an intelligible world ordered by

5016-686: The American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution . This intellectual and cultural renewal by the Lumières movement was, in its strictest sense, limited to Europe. These ideas were well understood in Europe, but beyond France the idea of "enlightenment" had generally meant a light from outside, whereas in France it meant a light coming from knowledge one gained. In the most general terms, in science and philosophy,

5168-531: The French Revolution (1789–1799), the Deistic Cult of the Supreme Being —a direct expression of Robespierre's theological views—was established briefly (just under three months) as the new state religion of France, replacing the deposed Catholic Church and the rival atheistic Cult of Reason . There were over five hundred French Revolutionaries who were deists. These deists do not fit

5320-415: The Latin term deus , meaning " god ") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe . More simply stated, Deism

5472-469: The Māturīdī school ; according to its founder, the 10th-century Muslim scholar and theologian Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī , human reason is supposed to acknowledge the existence of a creator deity ( bāriʾ ) solely based on rational thought and independently from divine revelation. He shared this conviction with his teacher and predecessor Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān (8th century CE), whereas al-Ashʿarī never held such

5624-684: The Sorbonne which, dominated by the Roman Catholic Church , never stopped trying to censor him. In 1751, he was ordered to redact some propositions contrary to the teaching of the Church; having proposed 74,000 years for the age of the Earth , this was contrary to the Bible which, using the scientific method on data found in biblical concordances , dated it to around 6,000 years. The Church

5776-659: The United States of America after the American Revolution in 1776 – were part of the British Empire , and Americans, as British subjects, were influenced by and participated in the intellectual life of the Kingdom of Great Britain . English Deism was an important influence on the thinking of Thomas Jefferson and the principles of religious freedom asserted in the First Amendment to

5928-421: The education of a cultured governing elite . Immanuel Kant employed technical terms that were not commonly understood by the layman. Arthur Schopenhauer contended that post-Kantian philosophers such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte , Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel deliberately imitated the abstruse style of writing practiced by Kant. G. W. F. Hegel 's philosophy, and

6080-566: The secularization of Turkey is merely a result of Western influence or even an alleged " conspiracy ", other commentators, even some pro-government ones, have come to the conclusion that "the real reason for the loss of faith in Islam is not the West but Turkey itself". Though Deism subsided in the United States post-Enlightenment, it never died out entirely. Thomas Edison , for example,

6232-443: The social contract as a reciprocal relationship between men, and more so between families and other groups, which would become increasingly stronger, accompanied by a concept of individual inalienable rights. The powers of God were moot amongst atheist Lumières. The Lumières movement redefined the ideas of liberty, property and rationalism, which took on meanings that we still understand today, and introduced into political philosophy

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6384-511: The "élite": a vague concept, and one of which the Lumières amongst others disapproved. de La Boétie, Étienn. Le Discours sur la Servitude Volontaire . There was considerable coverage in the English and French Press, but less so in Germany and Italy; in Spain and Russia very few knew about it save a few intellectuals, senior officials and grand families participated in the movement. The mass of

6536-548: The 17th century, there was no uniform, or codified, civil law. This social and legal background was criticised in works by the likes of Voltaire . Exiled in England between 1726 and 1729, he studied the works of John Locke and Isaac Newton, and the English monarchy. He became well known for his denunciation of injustices such as those against Jean Calas , Pierre-Paul Sirven , François-Jean de la Barre and Thomas Arthur, comte de Lally . The Lumières philosophy saw its climax in

6688-661: The 17th century. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646 – 1716) and Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) had independently and almost simultaneously developed the calculus , and René Descartes (1596 – 1650) the idea of monads . British philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and David Hume adopted an approach, later called empiricism , which preferred the use of the senses and experience over that of pure reason . Baruch Spinoza took Descartes' side, most of all in his Ethics . But he demurred from Descartes in Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione ("On

6840-511: The 19th and 20th centuries obscurantism became a polemical term for accusing an author of deliberately writing obscurely, in order to hide his or her intellectual vacuousness. From that perspective, obscure (clouded, vague, abstruse) writing does not necessarily indicate that the writer has a poor grasp of the subject, because unintelligible writing sometimes is purposeful. Aristotle divided his own works into two classifications: " exoteric " and " esoteric ". Most scholars have understood this as

6992-485: The 20th century, the American conservative political philosopher Leo Strauss and his neo-conservative adherents adopted the notion of government by the enlightened few as political strategy. He noted that intellectuals , dating from Plato , confronted the dilemma of either an informed populace "interfering" with government, or whether it were possible for good politicians to be truthful and still govern to maintain

7144-652: The Académie d'Architecture was without doubt the architect whose projects best represented the utopian, purely rational environment. (That which is rational, and thus based in the understanding of nature, cannot be at the same time utopian.) Starting in 1775 he built the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans , a very industrial city in Doubs . The bourgeoise had learned nothing from the Lumières, even though they saw Rousseau, Montesquieu and Kant as honest men who approved of

7296-705: The Blind for the Use of those who can See ") landed him in prison at the Château de Vincennes . Voltaire was accused of writing pamphlets criticising Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (1674–1723), and imprisoned in the Bastille . in 1721, Montesquieu published Lettres persanes (" Persian Letters ") anonymously in Holland . From 1728 to 1734, he went to many European countries. Faced with censorship and in financial difficulty,

7448-537: The Church"). Although there was no top-down official directive to revoke church membership, some Nazi Party members started doing so voluntarily and put other members under pressure to follow their example. Those who left the churches were designated as Gottgläubige ("believers in God"), a term officially recognised by the Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick on 26 November 1936. He stressed that

7600-487: The Citizen , which greatly influenced similar declarations of rights in the following centuries, and left in its wake global political upheaval. Especially in France and the United States, freedom of expression , freedom of religion and freedom of thought were held to be fundamental rights. The core values supported by the Lumières were religious tolerance , liberty and social equality . In England, America and France,

7752-552: The Deistic trend among Turkish people a year earlier, arguing that the "very archaic, dogmatic notion of religion" held by the majority of those claiming to represent Islam was causing "the new generations [to become] indifferent, even distant, to the Islamic worldview." Despite a lack of reliable statistical data, numerous anecdotes and independent surveys appear to point in this direction. Although some commentators claim that

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7904-573: The Enlightenment aimed for the triumph of reason over faith and belief ; in politics and economics, the triumph of the bourgeois over nobility and clergy . The Lumières movement was in large part an extension of the discoveries of Nicolas Copernicus in the 16th century, which were not well known during his lifetime, and more so of the theories of Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642). Inquiries to establish certain axioms and mathematical proofs continued as Cartesianism throughout

8056-573: The House of Habsburg, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor , Catherine II of Russia , Gustave III of Sweden – met with philosophers such as Voltaire, who was presented to the Court of Frederick the Great , and Diderot, who was presented to the Court of Catherine the Great . Philosophers such as d'Holbach were advocates of " enlightened absolutism " in the hope that their ideas would spread more quickly if they had

8208-530: The Improvement of the Understanding"), where he argued that the process of perception is not one of pure reason, but also the senses and intuition . Spinoza's thought was based on a model of the universe where God and Nature are one and the same. This became an anchor in the Age of Enlightenment , held across the ages from Newton's time to that of Thomas Jefferson 's (1743–1826). A notable change

8360-520: The Lumières movement came with many different talents: Thomas Jefferson had had a legal education but was equally at home with archaeology and architecture ; Benjamin Franklin had been a career diplomat and was a physicist. Condorcet wrote on subjects as wide-ranging as commerce, finance, education and science. The social origins of the philosophers were also diverse: many were from middle-class families (Voltaire, Jefferson), others from more modest beginnings ( Immanuel Kant , Franklin, Diderot) or from

8512-489: The Lumières was not to the exclusion of aesthetics. Reason and sentiment went hand-in-hand in their philosophy. The thoughts of the Lumières were equally capable of intellectual rigour and sentimentality. Despite controversy about the limits of their philosophy, especially when they denounced black slavery , many Lumières criticised slavery, or colonialism , or both, including Montesquieu in De l'Esprit des Lois (while keeping

8664-518: The Lumières. The Place Stanislas at Nancy, France is the focus of an array of neoclassical urban buildings, and has been on the UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites in France since 1983, as well as several other sites in the town, such as the Place de la Carrière and the Place d’Alliance , the administrative centre of the time. Claude Nicolas Ledoux (1736 – 1806) was a member of

8816-472: The Lumières. The Lumières' philosophy was thus based on the realities of a systematic, ordered and understandable world, which required Man also to think in an ordered and systematic way. As well as physical laws, this included ideas on the laws governing human affairs and the divine right of kings , leading to the idea that the monarch acts with the consent of the people, and not the other way around. This legal concept informed Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's theory of

8968-574: The United States Constitution . Other Founding Fathers who were influenced to various degrees by Deism were Ethan Allen , Benjamin Franklin , Cornelius Harnett , Gouverneur Morris , Hugh Williamson , James Madison , and possibly Alexander Hamilton . In the United States, there is a great deal of controversy over whether the Founding Fathers were Christians, Deists, or something in between. Particularly heated

9120-464: The actual religious beliefs and practices of uncivilized peoples, was seen to be a fabric of superstitions. Primitive man was no unspoiled philosopher, clearly seeing the truth of one God. And the history of religion was not, as the deists had implied, retrograde; the widespread phenomenon of superstition was caused less by priestly malice than by man's unreason as he confronted his experience. The Thirteen Colonies of North America – which became

9272-522: The aestheticism of the Lumières took on a moral aspect, the times of Voltaire's satire had passed, and Rousseau (in Julie, or the New Heloise of 1776) and the paintings of Jean-Baptiste Greuze sought the beautiful and the everlasting. As the century grew older, more literature and art turned its back on free forms and a lightness of touch, regarding them as aristocratic and worldly. They turned towards

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9424-597: The affairs of men." Thomas Jefferson is perhaps the Founding Father who most clearly exhibits Deistic tendencies, although he generally referred to himself as a Unitarian rather than a Deist. His excerpts of the canonical gospels (now commonly known as the Jefferson Bible ) strip all supernatural and dogmatic references from the narrative on Jesus' life . Like Franklin, Jefferson believed in God's continuing activity in human affairs. Thomas Paine

9576-405: The afterlife are rewarded or punished by God for their behavior in life. Thomas Paine believed in the "probability" of the immortality of the soul. The most natural position for Deists was to reject all forms of supernaturalism, including the miracle stories in the Bible. The problem was that the rejection of miracles also seemed to entail the rejection of divine providence (that is, God taking

9728-564: The alternate, Locke saw in Nature a source of unity and universal rights, with the State's assurance of protection. This "culture revolution" over the 17th and 18th centuries was a battle between these two viewpoints of the relationship between Man and Nature. This resulted, in France, in the spread of the notion of human rights, finding expression in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of

9880-467: The annexation of the mostly Catholic Federal State of Austria and mostly Catholic German-occupied Czechoslovakia into German-occupied Europe , indicates that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig , and 1.5% as "atheist". An early April 2018 report of the Turkish Ministry of Education , titled The Youth

10032-523: The application of these values resulted in a new definition of natural law and a separation of political power . To these values may be added a love of nature and the cult of reason. Aujourd’hui nous recevons trois éducations différentes ou contraires : celles de nos pères, celles de nos maîtres, celle du monde. Ce qu’on nous dit dans la dernière renverse toutes les idées des premières. Today we receive three different, conflicting, educations: those of our fathers, those of our masters, and those of

10184-489: The approval of the Head of State. Subsequent events would show the philosophers the limits of such an approach with sovereigns who were plus despotes qu’éclairés , "more absolutist than enlightened". Only Rousseau stuck rigidly to the revolutionary ideal of political equality. The spread of literacy and reading allowed the development of what may be called an espace public , "public space"; intellectual and political debate

10336-401: The better you listen." In the 1973 seminar Encore , he said that his Écrits ( Writings ) were not to be understood, but would effect a meaning in the reader, like that induced by mystical texts. The obscurity is not in his writing style, but in the repeated allusions to Hegel, derived from Alexandre Kojève 's lectures on Hegel, and similar theoretic divergences. The Sokal affair (1996)

10488-696: The churches, on the one hand through the Reichskonkordat with the Roman Catholic Church , and the forced merger of the German Evangelical Church Confederation into the Protestant Reich Church on the other. This policy seems to have gone relatively well until late 1936, when a "gradual worsening of relations" between the Nazi Party and the churches saw the rise of Kirchenaustritt ("leaving

10640-563: The city-state. Thus, in the New Yorker magazine article "Selective Intelligence", Seymour Hersh observes that Strauss endorsed the " noble lie " concept: the myths politicians use in maintaining a cohesive society. Shadia Drury criticized Strauss's acceptance of dissembling and deception of the populace as "the peculiar justice of the wise", whereas Plato proposed the noble lie as based upon moral good. In criticizing Natural Right and History (1953), she said that "Strauss thinks that

10792-432: The computer scientists John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid said that Joy's proposal was a form of technological tunnel vision, and that the technologically derived problems are infeasible, for disregarding the influence of non-scientists upon such societal problems. In the essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative" (1960), the economist Friedrich von Hayek said that political conservatism is ideologically unrealistic, because of

10944-538: The conceptual validity of scientific objectivity and the nature of scientific theory, among scientific realists and postmodern critics in American universities. Sokal's reason for publication of a false article was that postmodernist critics questioned the objectivity of science, by criticising the scientific method and the nature of knowledge, usually in the disciplines of cultural studies, cultural anthropology , feminist studies , comparative literature , media studies , and science and technology studies . Whereas

11096-749: The consequences of our inventions. Critics readily noted the obscurantism in Joy's elitist proposal for limiting the dissemination of "certain knowledge" in order to preserve society. A year later, in the Science and Technology Policy Yearbook 2001 , the American Association for the Advancement of Science answered Joy's propositions with the article "A Response to Bill Joy and the Doom-and-Gloom Technofuturists", wherein

11248-500: The conservative person's inability to adapt to changing human realities and refusal to offer a positive political program that benefits everyone in a society. In that context, Hayek used the term obscurantism differently, to denote and describe the denial of the empirical truth of scientific theory, because of the disagreeable moral consequences that might arise from acceptance of fact. The second sense of obscurantism denotes making knowledge abstruse, that is, difficult to grasp. In

11400-421: The crucial point of intellectual progress consisted of the synthesis of knowledge, enlightened by human reason, with the creation of a sovereign moral authority. A contrary point of view that developed, arguing that such a process would be swayed by social conventions, leading to a "New Truth" based on reason that was but a poor imitation of the ideal and unassailable truth. The Lumières movement thus tried to find

11552-455: The decision, philosophers including Barry Smith , W. V. O. Quine , David Armstrong , Ruth Barcan Marcus , René Thom , and twelve others, published a letter of protestation in The Times of London, arguing that "his works employ a written style that defies comprehension ... [thus] Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon

11704-399: The deliberate restriction of knowledge — opposition to the dissemination of knowledge ; and (2) deliberate obscurity — a recondite style of writing characterized by deliberate vagueness. In the 18th century, Enlightenment philosophers applied the term obscurantist to any enemy of intellectual enlightenment and the liberal diffusion of knowledge. In the 19th century, in distinguishing

11856-413: The denial of revelation as a valid source of religious knowledge—were much more numerous, and included: A central premise of Deism was that the religions of their day were corruptions of an original religion that was pure, natural, simple, and rational. Humanity lost this original religion when it was subsequently corrupted by priests who manipulated it for personal gain and for the class interests of

12008-417: The dissemination of ideas during the French Revolution . Obscurantism In philosophy , the terms obscurantism and obscurationism identify and describe the anti-intellectual practices of deliberately presenting information in an abstruse and imprecise manner that limits further inquiry and understanding of a subject. The two historical and intellectual denotations of obscurantism are: (1)

12160-404: The distant past, should have religious beliefs less infused with superstitions and closer to those of natural theology. This position became less and less plausible as thinkers such as David Hume began studying the natural history of religion and suggested that the origin of religion was not in reason but in emotions, such as the fear of the unknown. Different Deists had different beliefs about

12312-405: The décor and the structure. This paradigm resulted in a change of style in the middle of the 18th century: Rococo was dismissed, Ancient Greece and Palladian architecture became the principal references for neoclassical architecture . The University of Virginia , a UNESCO World Heritage Site , was founded by Thomas Jefferson . He drew up plans for parts of the campus based on the values of

12464-494: The essay Natural History of Religion (1757), he contended that polytheism , not monotheism , was "the first and most ancient religion of mankind" and that the psychological basis of religion is not reason, but fear of the unknown. In Waring's words: The clear reasonableness of natural religion disappeared before a semi-historical look at what can be known about uncivilized man— "a barbarous, necessitous animal," as Hume termed him. Natural religion, if by that term one means

12616-648: The established order, the philosophers were chased by the authorities and had to resort to subterfuge to escape prison. François-Marie Arouet took on the pseudonym Voltaire. In 1774, Thomas Jefferson wrote a report on behalf of the Virginia delegates to the First Continental Congress , which was convened to discuss the grievances of Great Britain 's American colonies. Because its content, he could only publish it anonymously. Diderot's Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient (" Letter on

12768-402: The foundation of Deist epistemology as knowledge based on experience or human reason. This effectively widened the gap between traditional Christians and what he called "Christian Deists", since this new foundation required that "revealed" truth be validated through human reason. Enlightenment Deism consisted of two philosophical assertions: (1) reason, along with features of the natural world,

12920-412: The historical role of Deism, leading to what he calls an "exclusive humanism". This humanism invokes a moral order whose ontic commitment is wholly intra-human with no reference to transcendence. One of the special achievements of such deism-based humanism is that it discloses new, anthropocentric moral sources by which human beings are motivated and empowered to accomplish acts of mutual benefit. This

13072-961: The idea of natural law is accepted, it becomes possible to form the modern view of what we would now call political economy . In his famous essay Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment? ( German : Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? , French : Qu'est-ce que les Lumières ? ), Immanuel Kant defined the Lumières thus: Les Lumières c’est la sortie de l’homme hors de l’état de tutelle dont il est lui-même responsable. L’état de tutelle est l’incapacité de se servir de son entendement sans la conduite d’un autre. On est soi-même responsable de cet état de tutelle quand la cause tient non pas à une insuffisance de l’entendement mais à une insuffisance de la résolution et du courage de s’en servir sans la conduite d’un autre . Sapere aude! Aie le courage de te servir de ton propre entendement! Tel est la devise des Lumières . Enlightenment

13224-514: The idea of the free individual, liberty for all guaranteed by the State (and not the whim of the government) backed by a strong rule of law . To understand the interaction between the Age of Reason and the Lumières, one approach is to compare Thomas Hobbes with John Locke . Hobbes, who lived for three quarters of the 17th century, had worked to create an ontology of human emotions, ultimately trying to make order out of an inherently chaotic universe. In

13376-446: The immortality of the soul, about the existence of Hell and damnation to punish the wicked, and the existence of Heaven to reward the virtuous. Anthony Collins, Bolingbroke , Thomas Chubb , and Peter Annet were materialists and either denied or doubted the immortality of the soul. Benjamin Franklin believed in reincarnation or resurrection. Lord Herbert of Cherbury and William Wollaston held that souls exist, survive death, and in

13528-537: The influence of Newton, they turned to the argument from design as the principal argument for the existence of God. Peter Gay identifies John Toland 's Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), and the "vehement response" it provoked, as the beginning of post-Lockian Deism. Among the notable figures, Gay describes Toland and Matthew Tindal as the best known; however, Gay considered them to be talented publicists rather than philosophers or scholars. He regards Conyers Middleton and Anthony Collins as contributing more to

13680-502: The intellectual climate of the time, there were differences among Deists about freedom and determinism. Some, such as Anthony Collins , were actually necessitarians. Views differ on whether David Hume was a Deist, an atheist , or something else. Like the Deists, Hume rejected revelation, and his famous essay On Miracles provided a powerful argument against belief in miracles. On the other hand, he did not believe that an appeal to Reason could provide any justification for religion. In

13832-552: The layman. In his early works, Karl Marx criticized German and French philosophy, especially German Idealism , for its traditions of German irrationalism and ideologically motivated obscurantism. Later thinkers whom he influenced, such as the philosopher György Lukács and social theorist Jürgen Habermas , followed with similar arguments of their own. However, philosophers such as Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek in turn criticized Marx and Marxist philosophy as obscurantist (however, see above for Hayek's particular interpretation of

13984-488: The limitations of quotidian (everyday) thought and its concepts. In the essay "Who Thinks Abstractly?", he said that it is not the philosopher who thinks abstractly, but the layman, who uses concepts as givens that are immutable, without context. It is the philosopher who thinks concretely, because he transcends the limits of quotidian concepts , in order to understand their broader context. This makes philosophical thought and language appear obscure, esoteric, and mysterious to

14136-474: The low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity, by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial". Jacques Lacan was an intellectual who defended obscurantism to a degree. To his students' complaint about the deliberate obscurity of his lectures, he replied: "The less you understand,

14288-604: The mid-16th century in early modern Europe . In the history of Islam , one of the earliest systematic schools of Islamic theology to develop was the Muʿtazila in the mid-8th century CE. Muʿtazilite theologians emphasized the use of reason and rational thought , positing that the injunctions of God are accessible through rational thought and inquiry, and affirmed that the Quran was created ( makhlūq ) rather than co-eternal with God, an affirmation that would develop into one of

14440-404: The middle of the 18th century. For Voltaire, it was obvious that if the monarch can get the people to believe unreasonable things, then he can get them to do unreasonable things. This axiom became the basis for his criticism of the Lumières, and led to the basis of romanticism : that constructions from pure reason created as many problems as they solved. According to the Lumières philosophers,

14592-511: The most contentious questions in the history of Islamic theology. In the 9th–10th century CE, the Ashʿarī school developed as a response to the Muʿtazila, founded by the 10th-century Muslim scholar and theologian Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī . Ashʿarītes still taught the use of reason in understanding the Quran, but denied the possibility to deduce moral truths by reasoning. This position was opposed by

14744-575: The nobility (Montesquieu, Condorcet). Some had had a religious education (Diderot, Louis de Jaucourt ) or one in the law (Montesquieu, Jefferson). The philosophers formed networks and communicated in letters; the vitriolic correspondence between Rousseau and Voltaire is well known. The great figures of the 18th century met and debated in the salons, cafés or academies . These thinkers and savants formed an international community. Franklin, Jefferson, Adam Smith , David Hume and Ferdinando Galiani all spent many years in France. Because they criticised

14896-401: The people could not care less: the vast majority of the common people, even in France, had never heard of Voltaire or Rousseau. Nevertheless, the Lumières had disrupted the old certainties. This did not stop at social and political upheaval: the Enlightenment inspired a revolutionary generation, which is not to say they explicitly encouraged the French Revolution of 1789 . The philosophers of

15048-563: The philosopher Derrida escapes metaphysical accounts of his work. Since the work ostensibly contains no metaphysics, Derrida has, consequently, escaped metaphysics. Derrida's philosophic work is especially controversial among American and British academics, as when the University of Cambridge awarded him an honorary doctorate, despite opposition from among the Cambridge philosophy faculty and analytical philosophers worldwide. In opposing

15200-521: The philosophers often resorted to the protection of aristocrats and patrons: Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes and Madame de Pompadour , chief mistress of Louis XV , supported Diderot. Marie-Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (1699 – 1777) paid part of the publishing costs of the Encyclopédie . From 1749 to 1777 she held a fortnightly salon , inviting artists, intellectuals, men of letters and philosophers. The other great salon of

15352-399: The philosophical notion of the thoughtful subject , an individual who could make decisions based on pure reason and no longer in the yoke of custom. In Two Treatises of Government , John Locke argued that property rights are not held in common but are totally personal, and made legitimate by the work required to obtain the property, as well as its protection (recognition) by others. Once

15504-509: The philosophical/theological position they advocated is called "Deism". Deism as a distinct philosophical and intellectual movement declined toward the end of the 18th century but had a revival in the early 19th century. Some of its tenets continued as part of other intellectual and spiritual movements, like Unitarianism , and Deism continues to have advocates today, including with modern variants such as Christian deism and pandeism . Deistical thinking has existed since ancient times ;

15656-474: The philosophies of those he influenced, especially Karl Marx , have been accused of obscurantism. Analytic and positivistic philosophers, such as A. J. Ayer , Bertrand Russell , and the critical-rationalist Karl Popper , accused Hegel and Hegelianism of being obscure. About Hegel's philosophy, Schopenhauer wrote that it is "a colossal piece of mystification, which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it

15808-518: The phrase " Positive Christianity ". The Nazi Party did not wish to tie itself to a particular Christian denomination , but with Christianity in general, and sought freedom of religion for all denominations "so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race " (point 24). When Hitler and the NSDAP got into power in 1933, they sought to assert state control over

15960-490: The political or religious authorities, and, per his knowledge of Maimonides , Al Farabi , and Plato , proposed that an esoteric writing style is proper for the philosophic text. Rather than explicitly presenting his thoughts, the philosopher's esoteric writing compels the reader to think independently of the text, and so learn. In the Phædrus , Socrates notes that writing does not reply to questions, but invites dialogue with

16112-429: The possibility of miracles. God was, after all, all-powerful and could do whatever he wanted including temporarily suspending his own natural laws. Enlightenment philosophers under the influence of Newtonian science tended to view the universe as a vast machine, created and set in motion by a creator being, that continues to operate according to natural law without any divine intervention. This view naturally led to what

16264-465: The postal service allowed a more rapid exchange of ideas throughout Europe, resulting in a new form of cultural unity. A second important change by the Lumières movement, looking back to the previous century, had its origin in France with the Encyclopédistes . This intellectual movement supported the idea that there was a structural model of both scientific and moral knowledge, that this model

16416-482: The priesthood a great deal of power, which the Deists believed the priesthood worked to maintain and increase. Deists saw it as their mission to strip away "priestcraft" and "mysteries". Tindal, perhaps the most prominent deist writer, claimed that this was the proper, original role of the Christian Church. One implication of this premise was that current-day primitive societies, or societies that existed in

16568-403: The priesthood, and encrusted it with superstitions and "mysteries"—irrational theological doctrines. Deists referred to this manipulation of religious doctrine as "priestcraft", a derogatory term. For deists, this corruption of natural religion was designed to keep laypeople baffled by "mysteries" and dependent on the priesthood for information about the requirements for salvation. This gave

16720-591: The publication of his fake article in Social Text magazine, Sokal addressed the matter in the May 1996 edition of the Lingua Franca journal, in the article "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies", in which he revealed that his transformative hermeneutics article was a parody , submitted "to test the prevailing intellectual standards", and concluded that, as an academic publication, Social Text ignored

16872-423: The rather subjective metaphysics of Descartes, Kant developed a more objective viewpoint in this branch of philosophy. Great thinkers at the end of the Lumières movement ( Adam Smith , Thomas Jefferson and even the young Goethe ) adopted into their philosophy the ideas of self-organising and evolutionary forces. The Lumières' stance was then presented with reference to what was seen as a universal truth: that Good

17024-511: The reader of ordinary intellect; emphasizing that writers often left contradictions and other errors to encourage the reader's more scrupulous (re-)reading of the text. In observing and maintaining the " exoteric — esoteric " dichotomy, Strauss was accused of obscurantism, and for writing esoterically. In the article " Why the Future Doesn't Need Us " (April 2000), the computer scientist Bill Joy , then chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, in

17176-429: The reader, thereby minimizing the problems of grasping the written word. Strauss noted that one of writing's political dangers is students' too-readily accepting dangerous ideas—as in the trial of Socrates , wherein the relationship with Alcibiades was used to prosecute him. For Leo Strauss, philosophers' texts offered the reader lucid "exoteric" (salutary) and obscure "esoteric" (true) teachings, which are concealed to

17328-401: The realm of organized religion, obscurantism is a distinct strain of anti-intellectualism that is independent of theologic allegiance, by which distinction, religious fundamentalism presupposes sincere religious belief in the person, whereas censorship is obscurantism that is based upon the élite power-group manipulating the religious faith of the majority of the population of believers. In

17480-682: The refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist." Like some other Deists, Franklin believed that, "The Deity sometimes interferes by his particular Providence, and sets aside the Events which would otherwise have been produc'd in the Course of Nature, or by the Free Agency of Man," and at the Constitutional Convention stated that "the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in

17632-422: The requisite intellectual rigor of verification and "felt comfortable publishing an article on quantum physics without bothering to consult anyone knowledgeable in the subject". Moreover, as a public intellectual , Sokal said that his hoax was an action protesting against the contemporary tendency towards obscurantism—abstruse, esoteric, and vague writing in the social sciences : In short, my concern over

17784-569: The rise of Unitarianism . Contemporary Deism attempts to integrate classical Deism with modern philosophy and the current state of scientific knowledge. This attempt has produced a wide variety of personal beliefs under the broad classification of belief of "deism." There are a number of subcategories of modern Deism, including monodeism (the default, standard concept of deism), pandeism , panendeism, spiritual deism, process deism, Christian deism , polydeism , scientific deism, and humanistic deism. Some deists see design in nature and purpose in

17936-403: The rise of nihilism . In Nazi Germany , Gottgläubig (literally: "believing in God") was a Nazi religious term for a form of non-denominationalism practised by those German citizens who had officially left Christian churches but professed faith in some higher power or divine creator . Such people were called Gottgläubige ("believers in God"), and the term for the overall movement

18088-509: The roots of Deism can be traced back to the philosophical tradition of Ancient Greece . The 3rd-century Christian theologian and philosopher Clement of Alexandria explicitly mentioned persons who believed that God was not involved in human affairs, and therefore led what he considered a licentious life. However, Deism did not develop as a religio-philosophical movement until after the Scientific Revolution , which began in

18240-426: The scientific realists countered that objective scientific knowledge exists, riposting that postmodernist critics almost knew nothing of the science they criticized. In the event, editorial deference to " academic authority " (the author-professor) prompted the editors of Social Text not to fact-check Sokal's manuscript by submitting it to peer review by a scientist. Concerning the lack of editorial integrity shown by

18392-668: The serious, the authentic and the natural, that fit the utilitarian morality of the bourgeois public whose taste was for neoclassicism: still having antiquity as subject-matter, but not the allegorical antiquity; a more realistic, sober antiquity, such as in the works of the painter Jacques-Louis David . This resulted in reflections about urbanism . The Lumières' model town would be a joint effort between public provision and sympathetic architects, to create administrative or utilitarian buildings (town halls, hospitals, theatres, commissariats) all provided with views, squares, fountains, promenades, and so on. The French Académie royale d'architecture

18544-476: The social problems that provoked the French Revolution (1789–1799), which violently overthrew the aristocracy and deposed the monarch, King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774–1792) . In the 19th century, the mathematician William Kingdon Clifford , who was an early proponent of Darwinism , worked to eliminate obscurantism in England after hearing clerics — who privately agreed with him about evolution — publicly denounce evolution as un-Christian heresy. Moreover, in

18696-454: The spirit of victory to direct the hand of the faithful French, and in a few hours the aristocrats received the attack which we prepared, the wicked ones were destroyed and liberty was avenged." Deism in Germany is not well documented. We know from correspondence with Voltaire that Frederick the Great was a Deist. Immanuel Kant 's identification with Deism is controversial. Peter Gay describes Enlightenment Deism as entering slow decline as

18848-522: The spread of subjectivist thinking is both intellectual and political. Intellectually, the problem with such doctrines is that they are false (when not simply meaningless). There is a real world; its properties are not merely social constructions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person would contend otherwise? And yet, much contemporary academic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious truths—the utter absurdity of it all being concealed through obscure and pretentious language. As

19000-570: The stereotype of deists because they believed in miracles and often prayed to God. In fact, over seventy of them thought that God miraculously helped the French Revolution win victories over their enemies. Furthermore, over a hundred French Revolutionary deists also wrote prayers and hymns to God. Citizen Devillere was one of the many French Revolutionary deists who believed God did miracles. Devillere said, "God, who conducts our destiny, deigned to concern himself with our dangers. He commanded

19152-578: The sub-title of the article proposed that: "Our most powerful twenty-first-century technologies—robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech—are threatening to make humans an endangered species", and said that: The experiences of the atomic scientists clearly show the need to take personal responsibility, the danger that things will move too fast, and the way in which a process can take on a life of its own. We can, as they did, create insurmountable problems in almost no time flat. We must do more thinking up front if we are not to be similarly surprised and shocked by

19304-426: The substance of debate, in contrast with fringe writers such as Thomas Chubb and Thomas Woolston . Other English Deists prominent during the period include William Wollaston , Charles Blount , Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke , and, in the latter part, Peter Annet , Thomas Chubb , and Thomas Morgan . Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury was also influential; though not presenting himself as

19456-529: The superiority of the ruling philosophers is an intellectual superiority and not a moral one ... [he] is the only interpreter who gives a sinister reading to Plato, and then celebrates him." Leo Strauss also was criticized for proposing the notion of "esoteric" meanings to ancient texts, obscure knowledge inaccessible to the "ordinary" intellect. In Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952), he proposes that some philosophers write esoterically to avert persecution by

19608-450: The term signified political disassociation from the churches, not an act of religious apostasy . The term "dissident", which some church leavers had used up until then, was associated with being "without belief" ( glaubenslos ), whilst most of them emphasized that they still believed in a God, and thus required a different word. A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era , and after

19760-532: The term). Martin Heidegger , and those influenced by him, such as Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas , have been labeled obscurantists by critics from analytic philosophy and the Frankfurt School of critical theory . Of Heidegger, Bertrand Russell wrote: "his philosophy is extremely obscure. One cannot help suspecting that language is here running riot. An interesting point in his speculations

19912-444: The time was that of Claudine Guérin de Tencin . In the 1720s, Voltaire exiled himself in England, where he absorbed Locke's ideas. The philosophers were, in general, less hostile to monarchical rule than they were to that of the clergy and the nobility. In his defence of Jean Calas , Voltaire defended Royal justice against the excesses of fantastical provincial courts. Many European monarchs – Charles III of Spain , Maria Theresa of

20064-587: The time, there was a particular taste for compendia of "all knowledge". This ideal found an instance in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers ("Encyclopaedia, or Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts"), usually known simply as the Encyclopédie . Published between 1750 and 1770 it aimed to lead people out of ignorance through

20216-453: The universe and in their lives. Others see God and the universe in a co-creative process. Some deists view God in classical terms as observing humanity but not directly intervening in our lives, while others see God as a subtle and persuasive spirit who created the world, and then stepped back to observe. In the 1960s, theologian Charles Hartshorne scrupulously examined and rejected both deism and pandeism (as well as pantheism ) in favor of

20368-486: The values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university." In the New York Review of Books article "An Exchange on Deconstruction" (February 1984), John Searle comments on Deconstruction : "anyone who reads deconstructive texts with an open mind is likely to be struck by the same phenomena that initially surprised me:

20520-476: The varieties of obscurantism found in metaphysics and theology , from the "more subtle" obscurantism of the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant and of modern philosophical skepticism , Friedrich Nietzsche said that: "The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding, but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence." In restricting education and knowledge to

20672-417: The widest dissemination of knowledge. The Lumières movement was, for all its existence, pulled in two directions by opposing social forces: on one side, a strong spiritualism accompanied by a traditional faith in the religion of the Church; on the other, the rise of an anticlerical movement, critical of the differences between religious theory and practice, which was most manifest in France. Anticlericism

20824-521: The works of Montaigne , Pierre Bayle , and Montesquieu . The most famous of the French Deists was Voltaire , who was exposed to Newtonian science and English Deism during his two-year period of exile in England (1726–1728). When he returned to France, he brought both back with him, and exposed the French reading public (i.e., the aristocracy) to them, in a number of books. French Deists also included Maximilien Robespierre and Rousseau . During

20976-468: The world to be more and more ordered, even as machines and measuring instruments became ever more sophisticated and precise. The most famous French natural philosopher of the 18th century, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon , was critical of this natural theology in his masterwork Histoire Naturelle . Buffon rejected the idea of ascribing to divine intervention and the "supernatural" that which science could now explain. This criticism brought him up against

21128-625: The world. It is only when we know the last that we can reject the first two. The ideal figure of the Lumières was a philosopher, a man of letters with a social function of exercising his reason in all domains to guide his and others' conscience, to advocate a value system and use it in discussing the problems of the time. He is a committed individual, involved in society , an honnête homme qui agit en tout par raison ( Encyclopédie ; "Honest man who approaches everything with reason"), qui s’occupe à démasquer des erreurs ( Diderot , "Who concerns himself with revealing error"). The rationalism of

21280-428: Was Gottgläubigkeit ("belief in God"); the term denotes someone who still believes in a God, although without having any institutional religious affiliation. These National Socialists were not favourable towards religious institutions of their time, nor did they tolerate atheism of any type within their ranks. The 1943 Philosophical Dictionary defined Gottgläubig as: "official designation for those who profess

21432-446: Was a publishing hoax that the professor of physics Alan Sokal perpetrated on the editors and readers of Social Text , an academic journal of post-modern cultural studies that was not then a peer-reviewed publication. In 1996, as an experiment testing editorial integrity ( fact-checking , verification, peer review, etc.), Sokal submitted "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity",

21584-439: Was also hostile to his no less illustrious contemporary Carl von Linné , and some have concluded that the Church simply refused to believe that order existed in nature. This effort to research and elucidate universal laws, and to determine their component parts, also became an important element in the construction of a philosophy of individualism , where everyone had rights based only on fundamental human rights . There developed

21736-546: Was heavily influenced by Thomas Paine 's The Age of Reason . Edison defended Paine's "scientific deism", saying, "He has been called an atheist , but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity." In 1878, Edison joined the Theosophical Society in New Jersey, but according to its founder, Helena Blavatsky , he

21888-531: Was innate and that its expression was a form of human liberation. Starting 1751, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert published the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers ("Systematic Encyclopaedia or Dictionary of Science, Arts and Crafts"). This raised questions on who should have the liberty to get hold of such information; the Press played an important role in

22040-399: Was no longer confined to the inner circle of the administrative class and the élite, encompassing larger parts of society. This process of dissemination of new ideas was increased by new methods of communication. Parts of the Encyclopédie , were read by the nobility and the upper class in literary salons , with those present giving their opinions on the writings of philosophers. Newspapers and

22192-541: Was not a very active member. In an October 2, 1910, interview in the New York Times Magazine , Edison stated: Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me—the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love—He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us—nature did it all—not

22344-553: Was not the only source of tension in France: some noblemen contested monarchical power and the upper classes wanted to see greater fruit from their labours. A relaxing of morals fomented opinion against absolutism and the Ancient Order. According to Dale K. Van Kley, Jansenism in France also became a source of division. The French judicial system showed itself to be outdated. Even though commercial law had become codified during

22496-644: Was not until the 1680s that Herbert found a true successor in Charles Blount (1654 – 1693). The appearance of John Locke 's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) marks an important turning-point and new phase in the history of English Deism. Lord Herbert's epistemology was based on the idea of "common notions" (or innate ideas ). Locke's Essay was an attack on the foundation of innate ideas. After Locke, deists could no longer appeal to innate ideas as Herbert had done. Instead, deists were forced to turn to arguments based on experience and nature. Under

22648-420: Was of the opinion that le beau est ce qui plait ("The beautiful is the pleasant"). For Abbé Laugier , on the contrary, the beautiful was that which was in line with rationality. The natural model for all architecture was the log cabin supported by four tree trunks, with four horizontal parts and a roof, respectively columns , entablature , and pediments . The model of a Greek temple was thus extended into

22800-511: Was short, readable, and probably the only Deistic treatise that continues to be read and influential today. The last contributor to American Deism was Elihu Palmer (1764–1806), who wrote the "Bible of American Deism", Principles of Nature , in 1801. Palmer is noteworthy for attempting to bring some organization to Deism by founding the "Deistical Society of New York" and other Deistic societies from Maine to Georgia. France had its own tradition of religious skepticism and natural theology in

22952-444: Was the emergence of a naturalist philosophy , spreading across Europe, embodied by Newton. The scientific method – exploring experimental evidence and constructing consistent theories and axiom systems from observed phenomena – was undeniably useful. The predictive ability of its resulting theories set the tone for his masterwork Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687). As an example of scientific progress in

23104-442: Was then called " necessitarianism " (the modern term is " determinism "): the view that everything in the universe—including human behavior—is completely, causally determined by antecedent circumstances and natural law. (See, for example, La Mettrie 's L'Homme machine .) As a consequence, debates about freedom versus "necessity" were a regular feature of Enlightenment religious and philosophical discussions. Reflecting

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